


i think it's gotta be you

by kairiolette



Series: chance encounters [2]
Category: Free!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 14:02:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6242260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kairiolette/pseuds/kairiolette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two months after Sousuke first meets Kisumi, they meet again as next-door neighbors. (written for the prompt "brand new neighbors au" on tumblr, sequel to the "met at a wedding" au!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i think it's gotta be you

**Author's Note:**

> i recommend reading the first parts [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5859169/chapters/13505656) first :)
> 
>  
> 
> [here](http://kairiolette.tumblr.com/post/141007694142/ok-then-soukisu-16) on tumblr! also talk soukisu with me on my twitter [@rachethyst](http://twitter.com/rachethyst) if you want!!

 

 

Spring starts to feel like a season in its own right rather than winter leftovers when Sousuke first moves into his dorm. Moving out of home, as he learns the hard way, requires a lot more effort than might be worth it; Sousuke hates having to inconvenience his parents for a whole day of strenuous packing and unpacking, but boxes don’t move themselves and sons don’t leave home without a fanfare of farewells, so it seems.

He lifts another box from the bin in which he wheeled all his stuff, cardboard and labeled ‘kitchen supplies’ and bulging slightly at its taped edges. His mother carries a lamp into his new room where his father finagles with the mini fridge, and Sousuke lets his eyes follow the footsteps he hears from down the hall. His gaze catches on a boy, of course—a boy that Sousuke knows; one he hasn’t seen since the tail end of the previous semester, one that looks so out of place letting himself into the room right beside Sousuke’s that Sousuke has to fight the urge to rub his eyes or pinch himself awake. And he only realizes he’s staring when, of course, their eyes meet.

 _Ah,_ Sousuke thinks with that first glance, and with surprising composure given the circumstance. The boy’s shocked expression must mirror Sousuke’s own—until it lifts up into a smile whereas Sousuke surely cringes. _I guess my next-door neighbor this year will be Shigino Kisumi._

Sousuke tears his eyes away as a distant panic rises in his chest and a cold sweat breaks out up the nape of his neck, as if he just recalled something mortifying he said in front of his middle school class years ago. If Kisumi comes over to him right now, in front of his parents, Sousuke has no idea what kind of face he’d make, or what he would say, or, above all else, what _Kisumi_ would say.

His father says something to him and it sounds fuzzy; Sousuke blinks, giving his head a sharp shake, and returns his attention to his parents, to the box straining in his hands, to moving into his new dorm. When he glances back over to where Kisumi had been unlocking his door, he sees no one; he gets back to unpacking, and he lets out the breath he had been holding. And, for not the first time, Sousuke wonders if Kisumi had just been his imagination.

  
  
  


On Sousuke’s first day back to classes, the buildings all look the same—dainty enough but shabby if you look closer, surrounded by blooming bushes and students, and inextricably identical. He knows, definitely, where two buildings are:  the one that houses the cafeteria, and the one wherein he has all of his classes this semester. He knows a third one, too:  the dorm building he does not live in; the one he had spent a night in during a chance encounter with the boy he’s certain he saw entering the dorm beside his own just the other day.

 _I never liked coincidences,_ he thinks.

He focuses on the immediate issue at hand, though; helpful signs pop up every so often along the meandering paved pathways that create a maze throughout the campus, but they use directionals like “north” and “west,” so they might as well be written in Greek. And Sousuke doesn’t feel up to pulling out a campus map like a freshman might. He decides to endure the situation for a little longer, savoring the stinging fresh spring air thick with pollen and the vague waft of illicit cigarette smoke, before entering the nearest building and hoping for a miracle—when someone calls out his name.

“Headed to class?” Kisumi asks, jogging over the stretch of distance between them, right across the otherwise untouched grass to where Sousuke has frozen stiff on the sidewalk. He grins as broad as Sousuke remembers it, brushing his hair back from his eyes with his hand, squinting against the sun that must glare at him from somewhere far away behind Sousuke’s head.

“Class just ended,” he manages, tempered like he’s talking to an old friend, or an easygoing acquaintance with whom he has never spooned. He sticks his hands as far into his pockets as they can go. “I’m going back to my room.”

The tip of Kisumi’s nose is pinked from the chill. He raises his eyebrows. Sousuke guesses he’s not quite excused from this conversation. “Our building’s this way, isn’t it?”

 _So he had recognized me, the other day,_ Sousuke thinks, one of his more irrational fears both resolved and somehow worsened at once.

“Right,” he says, looking toward the building Kisumi points at. He had just passed it. Kisumi tilts his head, eyes shadowed by the palm of his hand.

“I’ll walk you there, so you don’t get lost.”

“I’m not lost,” Sousuke insists in a mumble, though he has little choice but to walk with a person headed in the same direction as he, dragging his feet alongside Kisumi’s bouncy gait. They almost knock into each other when Kisumi leans forward to meet his eyes.

“So, you live on campus now,” he says, and again Sousuke thinks, _so, you do remember me._

“Obviously,” he replies, and Kisumi makes a grumbly noise, but when Sousuke peeks at him out of the corner of his eyes his playful frown looks wrenchingly familiar. Sousuke rubs at his shoulder. “I’ve been saving up for it, so…”

“It’ll be harder for you to avoid me, now that we’re neighbors,” Kisumi says as he heaves open the door that leads into what apparently is their dorm building. He smiles knowingly but Sousuke avoids looking at him altogether, stepping past him through the doorway.

“I never avoided you,” he says, and mostly that’s true; he may have switched up his regular gym schedule to circumnavigate awkward and troublesome encounters, and he may have been seized by a sudden need to switch course whenever he caught sight of the unmistakable Kisumi from across the campus courtyard, always laughing with a group of friends. But otherwise, it wasn’t that hard to miss each other after their one night, and soon enough, Kisumi no longer gratingly plagued his every waking thought.

Kisumi lets out a humming huff of a sigh beside him.

“When I didn’t see you at the gym that following Monday, I felt a little lonely, you know,” he says, and when Sousuke looks over at him expecting a cunning grin, Kisumi has the audacity to seem embarrassed by his own little confession. _Why even say it, then?_ Sousuke wonders, clenching his teeth.

“We didn’t exchange numbers,” Sousuke blurts, and his burning face tells him he should probably take his own advice. He feels Kisumi’s expectant gaze as if he were outright poking his cheek; he slides his phone out of his pocket and passes it over to Kisumi—a risky move, Sousuke knows—who makes a show of adding his number and taking a selfie to attach to the contact. Sousuke wonders, as they reach their hallway, what the past two months would have been like if Kisumi had been texting him the whole time. And, more lightly, he wonders how much of a headache his emoticon usage inevitably is, though he supposes that he'll find out soon enough. When they reach Sousuke’s door, Kisumi hangs back instead of walking past to his own room.

“It really has been a while, hasn’t it,” he says, and Sousuke pauses before pulling his key out of his pocket, glancing back over his shoulder. It’s something he had only dared to consider before: that Kisumi actually missed him these past two months apart. Though, now it seems to be an out of sight, out of mind type of deal—now that Sousuke’s the shiny new neighbor, the memories of that wedding and that night in Kisumi’s bed and the next inevitable morning became as vivid as yesterday again. _I guess I might be that way, too,_ Sousuke thinks, though he presumes to know nothing going on behind Kisumi’s wicked eyes and fairy grin.

“Want to come in?” he asks, because if his life is starting to turn into a series of chance encounters, he might as well work with it rather than against. And when he twists the doorknob and pushes open his door, a beaming Kisumi steps into his room far too eagerly.

Though his room is white-wall plain and still freshly unpacked, Kisumi jumps to inspect everything; Sousuke figures a nosy quirk like that goes well with his personality. Sousuke sits down on his bed, which he luckily remembered to make before he left for class, and he tries not to think about the last and only time he was alone in a room with Kisumi. And he wonders what Kisumi could be thinking about right now, under his bubbly exterior.

“It’s nice not having a roommate, isn’t it?” he sighs happily, noisily flipping through a textbook on Sousuke’s desk.

“You don’t have one anymore?” Sousuke asks, remembering in flashes hushed voices and a room split in half by a clothespinned bedsheet. Kisumi sends him a grin from where he stands at his dresser, inspecting the knickknacks on its countertop, and though Sousuke is rarely known to beat around the bush, he feels a sudden swell of guilt for even vaguely broaching the subject of that night.

“So you haven’t forgotten about me,” Kisumi sighs, and before Sousuke can get in a _how on earth can I_ , he finds himself on the receiving end of a soft smile that seems to make the walls of his room push in toward each other, like a trap in a haunted house. _I did forget how obnoxious you are,_ he thinks dizzily. “I’m happy we’re neighbors.”

Swallowing thickly, Sousuke wipes his hands on the lap of his pants once Kisumi turns his back to him again.

“It’s good to know someone nearby,” he agrees gruffly, swallowing a half-hearted _I guess_. Kisumi laughs under his breath, stepping back to Sousuke’s side of the room.

“The walls are pretty thin, though,” he says, knocking on the one that separates his and Sousuke’s room, “You better behave yourself when I’m trying to sleep.”

“I’m sure that’s my line,” Sousuke replies readily; he knows that Kisumi doesn’t even need to be making much noise at all to seem glaringly loud. He giggles again, coming over by Sousuke, stooping to examine his night table. When he tries to open the drawer, Sousuke blocks it shut with his knee; there’s a loud smack of wood and Kisumi’s wide eyes hover in front of Sousuke’s.

His lips twist into a smirk. Sousuke has kissed those lips before. He pulls back from the drawer and straightens up, folding his hands behind his back while looking down his nose at Sousuke, eyes sparkling. And Sousuke feels as though, after a long break, he just settled back into some confusing routine.

“I have to get to class,” Kisumi says. Sousuke raises his eyebrows; maybe he had been on his way there when Sousuke had ran into him. But he’s already on his way out Sousuke’s door when he looks over his shoulder one more time, “Let’s treat each other kindly from now on, right, neighbor?”

“Sure,” Sousuke agrees, and as soon as Kisumi shuts the door behind him Sousuke flops onto his back, pressing the cool underside of his pillow to his face. Of all the worst-case-scenario ways he imagined reuniting with Kisumi… _it could be worse,_ he realizes, ever the optimist.

  
  
  


Sousuke isn’t sure why they bothered exchanging numbers if their primary mode of communication for the following weeks comes in the form of Kisumi knocking on his door. Before long, he recognizes the exact sound of it, the way it always seems to be like the rhythm to some pop song, the way it always comes when Sousuke’s room seems the quietest.

The first time had been just the day after they had met again in the courtyard; Kisumi had shown up at his door in shorts, a light tee, and a windbreaker, with running shoes on his feet and a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. And not ten minutes later, Sousuke found himself spotting a sweat-soaked, bench-pressing Kisumi at the campus gym, critiquing his technique while he pouted and protested.

Having Kisumi in his life still feels like a bad plot twist in a movie, or like a cliche coincidence that should only happen in fairytales or shoujo manga. But Sousuke strangely always seems to have nothing better to do; Kisumi drags him to the cafeteria no matter the time—luckily Sousuke is always up for a meal—to stuffy nearby bars just off campus, to countless stores in the outlet mall a few stops away by train where he’d trick Sousuke into carrying his shopping bags, to illicit parties in other dorm rooms where he’d fend off offered cups for Sousuke with a _he doesn’t drink_ and then throw a cheeky _surprised I remember?_ grin Sousuke’s way every time.

Or, he wanders over to Sousuke’s room in his pajamas, holding his books in his arms as a bulging backpack threatens to slide off the one shoulder it hangs on. _A sight for sore eyes,_ Sousuke might have said, if he knew Kisumi wouldn’t take the piss out of him for it, and if real people ever actually spouted cheesy lines like that. Sousuke could wrap his head around his unfinished chemistry homework better than he could Kisumi’s persistence.

“The pillow smells like you,” he sighs, voice muffled, after he drops his belongings on Sousuke’s floor and belly-flops onto his bed. He peeks at Sousuke from where he smothers himself with the pillow, as Sousuke kicks his backpack away from the middle of the floor. “Don’t you want to know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing?”

“No,” Sousuke replies, because Kisumi has already told him he likes the way his cologne smells, not that he needs any validation from him at all. He tugs at one of Kisumi’s ankles as he pouts into the pillow. “Sit up.”

Kisumi swings his legs around so Sousuke can sit beside him, and they pull their books into their laps; Sousuke ever studying for bio while Kisumi has his usual packet of English worksheets. They’ve gotten homework done together before somehow, but between them silence rarely lasts, and Sousuke always finds himself distracted.

Alone with Kisumi, and especially in these rare moments when he goes totally quiet save for the scratching of his pen, Sousuke always feels on the verge of saying something he shouldn’t. Usually when he has something to say, no filter sifts through it; he just says it, regardless of consequence. But as always with Kisumi, he isn’t quite sure what it is, or how to articulate it, or why he feels like he’s perpetually out of a comfort zone he didn’t even know he had in the first place. Sousuke wonders if Kisumi has this type of effect on other people. Or maybe he’s the lucky one.

“Can you even see the page through your hair?” is what Sousuke ends up asking instead, watching the way Kisumi’s bangs skirt the tops of his eyelashes when he looks up, stunned. He furrows his eyebrows; Sousuke snorts when that makes his bangs shift even more. “That annoys even me.”

Kisumi huffs so his hair floats upward and ruffles, bottom lip jutting out. “How mean.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen your forehead,” Sousuke continues; it’s not everyday he has the upperhand on Kisumi, in fact it’s everyday he doesn’t. But Kisumi just pushes his bangs back, all the thick wavy hair, and with a proud smile, points. _Of course,_ Sousuke thinks, wishing everything were as simple as, “Ah, there it is.”

“Do I look much different?” he asks, still pointing to his forehead, leaning into where Sousuke tries to avert his attention elsewhere, “What’s the verdict on my forehead?”

Sousuke flicks it; he supposes it’s good for that much. “Don’t ask dumb questions.”

“If it bothers you that much,” Kisumi starts, letting his hair fall back down, and before Sousuke can insist _it really doesn’t,_ Kisumi grabs his wrist, “then hold it back for me.”

He presses Sousuke’s palm to his forehead, bangs soft and tickling the edges of his hand. It’s times like these where Sousuke feels the urge to blurt something out the most; like _was it all a dream? Was it a nightmare? Why have we moved on so quickly?_ He gathers feathery strands of hair between his fingers and drags his hand back, feeling the warm shape of Kisumi’s head under his palm, his forehead silky where his thumb brushes against it. “Do your work.”

“It’s way more distracting this way, Sousuke,” Kisumi warns, and when he tilts his head back so the tip of his nose brushes against Sousuke’s wrist, Sousuke snatches his hand back altogether. He looks down at the book on his lap with a steely frown, and Kisumi’s laughter sways him into Sousuke’s side.

“You’re pretty easy to read,” he says, smug for whatever reason, and Sousuke imagines he’s batting his eyelashes but he won’t dare to look, and he won’t dare to ask what he even means.

“You’re the first person to say that to me,” he grumbles, flipping a page, and at that Kisumi perks up so much that Sousuke’s tempted to take it back.

“Let’s go somewhere tonight,” he says, as he usually does, with an elbow into Sousuke’s arm that makes the trail of his highlighter zigzag up the page. Kisumi leans in with his chest flush against Sousuke’s arm, a bent knee pressing at his hip, and Sousuke guesses that getting back to studying will be easier said than done at this point.

“Go by yourself,” he replies either way; it’s day one of their first extended weekend of the semester and Sousuke would rather catch up on all the early mornings and late nights he’s had the past week or so. Though, he thinks, glancing at Kisumi with his rumpled hoodie and bedhead hair, he wouldn’t mind if Kisumi wanted to stay in with him, lazily chugging through their homework together on his bed. Kisumi smiles in that smug way again, and not for the first time, Sousuke wonders if he can read minds.

“I guess we can stay in,” he sighs, already including Sousuke in his plans, and before he picks up his pen and starts up his homework again, he curls his hand around Sousuke’s arm and rests the point of his chin against his shoulder. It digs in a bit, almost enough to make Sousuke shrug him away, and when he talks Sousuke nearly shudders at the breath against his neck, “But tomorrow, we actually leave the dorms!”

“I do go out, you know,” Sousuke protests, though most of the time it’s against his will. The last time he had asked Kisumi about his newfound hobby of dragging Sousuke around with him, he mentioned something cheeky about showing him off, so Sousuke immediately stopped pressing the issue.

“But never with me,” Kisumi whines, and Sousuke, recalling nights of he and Kisumi at a tight bar where they’d have to talk into each other’s ears to be heard over the music, fingers brushing as they try sour sips of each other’s drinks, thinks, _it’s always with you._

  
  
  


Sousuke swings open his door Sunday afternoon after the echoing of that Kisumi-brand knock, a prepared _go away I’m taking a nap_ and a subsequent _no you can't join me_ on the tip of his tongue, when he sees no Kisumi before him. He sees nobody in his doorway at all, until he looks down.

“O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o,” stutters the young boy standing before him, eyes wide like he just saw a ghost, upturned face paled and full and familiar. Just as he starts to piece together the boy’s wispy hair and terrified violet eyes, Kisumi peeks his head around the corner of the doorway.

“Did you think I shrunk?” he asks, stepping into full view, resting his elbow up against the door frame. The boy hops behind Kisumi, still peering up at Sousuke from around his waist.

“Your brother,” Sousuke realizes. The boy shudders when Sousuke looks back down at him; he begins to wonder if he has something on his face, or if he sprouted a second head from his neck.

“His name’s Hayato,” Kisumi says, sounding like a typical proud older brother as he twists around to pat Hayato’s head, telling him to “say hi!”

Hayato wails a despairing _hiiiii?!?!?!_ that sounds like it was choked out of him up to Sousuke, clenching a fist in Kisumi’s jacket. Sousuke stoops down a bit, just enough to not seem looming, and smiles.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” he says, and the boy’s expression melts into pleasant surprise rather than horror-movie surprise. “Are you stuck with babysitting Kisumi today?”

Hayato giggles almost as loud as Kisumi scowls.

“You better not laugh at that,” he whines, kneeing his brother gently. Sousuke turns his attention to him; he’s wearing a light spring jacket so comically similar to his brother’s that Sousuke has to refrain from pinching his cheek.

“What are you up to, Kisumi?” Sousuke wonders, glancing between the two flushed, smiling faces.

“That’s a loaded question!” Kisumi admonishes, wagging a finger in Sousuke’s face. He pats his brother’s head again. “I’m taking Hayato back to my parents’ house, and we thought you’d want to come along for the ride.”

Sousuke finds himself ambushed by near-identical grins, one pure and one pure trouble. He sighs.

“You play dirty,” he mumbles, and before he turns around to grab his jacket and wallet, Kisumi lowers his eyes like he wants to say something that he’d have to cover his brother’s ears for.

  
  
  


“I didn’t know your parents were actually going to be there, Kisumi.”

He snarls his name through gritted teeth once he’s sure they have cleared the Shigino apartment complex, glancing back over his shoulder for good measure. He gives a terse push to the back of Kisumi’s head, though Kisumi seems more delighted than reprimanded by the contact.

“What did you expect?” he laughs, bumping into Sousuke’s shoulder as they follow along the sidewalk, heading toward the train station. He pats Sousuke’s back, “Though, I didn’t think we’d stay so long; that must have been a little awkward for you.”

With a huff Sousuke shakes his head; it’s a little late for Kisumi’s pity. Parents tend to like him, though, and he had already won over Hayato; mild discomfort had been worth enduring in exchange for a free meal, plus a glimpse into Kisumi’s childhood room and a hall littered with baby photos that Kisumi had been far too proud to showcase.

“But you enjoyed dinner, right?” Kisumi asks, just as they round the corner and get caught behind a weekend crowd, train-bound like them. “You really inhaled it, after all!”

“Don’t fish for compliments,” Sousuke says, slipping his hands into his pockets; he had already thanked Kisumi’s parents just enough. “You weren’t the cook.”

“I ask because you're a good cook yourself,” he replies, then hums wistfully, “That was the best breakfast I ever had, before.”

The last and only time Sousuke had made Kisumi breakfast, with whatever he could salvage from a sparse mini-fridge while a groggy and fairly hungover Kisumi configured the coffeemaker, was the morning after they first met. They had a plain arrangement of toast and rice, and Kisumi nearly started drooling on his shoulder while he fried eggs.

“It couldn’t have been that good,” Sousuke mutters stiffly. “You must eat poorly.”

“Then you’ll cook more meals for me if I’m hungry, right?” he asks, sidestepping Sousuke’s discomfort with a practiced saccharine smile.

“Not a chance,” he replies, and before he can veer toward the steps that descend into the subway station, Kisumi grabs him by the wrist.

“Let’s walk instead,” he insists, and instantly Sousuke finds himself being dragged to the entrance of the park across the road, the one whose scenic routes would eventually spit them out near enough to their university. “Today really feels like spring!”

Sousuke swears the sun moves out from behind a cloud and robins start chirping as if Kisumi had commanded them as they enter the park. And once they reach the interior, Kisumi’s hand still curled around his wrist, the flat and greening landscape stretches out before them as if they weren't in Tokyo anymore; it might be objectively lovely, but Sousuke foresees a whole lot of walking.

“Did you really need me to escort you back and forth?” he asks as they embark, clinging to the side of the trail lined with purple flowerbeds and shrubs, the skyscraper-free sky as clear as Sousuke wishes Kisumi’s ulterior motives were. Maybe he’d end up being tricked into paying for their ice cream again, though there’s no way he’d be roped into giving Kisumi a piggyback ride for a second time. Instead, Kisumi suddenly throws an arm around his shoulders, almost sending him stumbling.

“I like spending time with you,” he laughs, loud enough to rival the group of kids riding their bikes around them on the trail. “I get along well with your type.”

“Type?” Sousuke repeats, rather dumbly. Kisumi stilts his pace, hanging off of him so heavily.

“Broody on the outside, pushover on the inside,” he explains, and before Sousuke can object to whatever _pushover_ means, Kisumi ducks his head, cheek brushing against Sousuke’s shoulder, his collar blocking the wind from making his face any pinker. “And just being near you…”

Sousuke startles at his soft tone, but Kisumi turns a wretched grin up to him in barely half a second.

“...makes me look that much better in comparison!”

“But does my type get along well with you?” Sousuke wonders, pushing a spluttering Kisumi away by the face and ducking out from under his arm.

“I’m the one you spend the most time with, so yes!” Kisumi declares, locking his arm once again around Sousuke’s neck, hanging onto him like some sort of monkey.

“That’s—” Sousuke falters, the _not true_ dying on his lips, because even half-heartedly, he can’t deny it. Before he can contemplate what his life has become, Kisumi giggles into his hand.

“I only say so because it’s true for me, too,” he says, patting Sousuke’s arm, as if that would reassure instead of deeply confound him. Sousuke slows down, matching the leisurely way Kisumi seems to be navigating the park, like he wants to spend forever walking it.

A Sunday evening here teems with activity; flocks of small brown birds hop from tree to tree as birdwatchers glue themselves to their binoculars, kids kick around a soccer ball or toss a baseball, joggers make rounds along the labyrinth of overlapping asphalt paths. Further along their own petal-littered path, if Sousuke squints he can see the park fountain, surrounded by strollers and tike bikes and their respective bustling parkgoers trying to make the most out of the few daylight hours left. He’d think, with all this fresh air, it should be easier to breathe. He supposes that’s one of many side effects of being friends with Kisumi, one that has little to do with the arm clamped around his neck; perpetually feeling on the cusp of something new and breathtakingly unfamiliar. 

“I guess there is another reason I wanted to take the long way home,” Kisumi starts with little preamble, withdrawing his arm and leaving Sousuke’s neck vulnerable to the nippy evening breeze. Kisumi has his chin lifted to the sky; if Sousuke weren’t beside him, he’d surely start walking into things with that distant smile. “Something’s been on my mind ever since that night.”

 _That night_ —that’s how Sousuke has started to refer to it in his mind, too, as if it were taboo; the dark and stormy type that catalyzes some sort of horror story. Kisumi certainly is terrifying.

“What is it?” Sousuke prompts once the distant caw of a crow starts to fill the silence Kisumi left.

“That night, remember, the one where we met at the wedding. And then you—”

“—spit it out,” Sousuke grits, counting cracks in the pavement under his feet. It’s the first time he ever outright mentioned the night they met; they prefer to dance around it, building a friendship off pretending it never happened. Sousuke had begun to think he had made most of it up.

“Am I making you nervous, Sousuke?” he asks, a mocking gasp of surprise tinting his voice. This beating around the bush—Kisumi’s the nervous one, though Sousuke can’t say it’s not aggravatingly contagious.

“Kisumi?” he prompts again, and Kisumi takes a dramatic heave of an inhale through his upturned nose.

“That night, and that morning, too…” he says, and Sousuke assumes it’s another false start and almost shakes him by the shoulders, until Kisumi stops walking, catching Sousuke by the crook of his elbow. He turns him so they face each other in the middle of the path, blocking anyone who might want to walk past. Facing the wind, his hair flutters back from his narrowed eyes. His mouth gives a nervous twitch before, rather solemnly despite the words, he says:

“We kissed four times, and four is a deathly unlucky number. We need to round it out!”

First, Sousuke thinks, _that’s the worst excuse I’ve ever heard_. Then he realizes it’s an excuse, and Kisumi’s loudly carrying on about kissing him in the middle of a busy Sunday park.

“Then, I take back the last kiss,” Sousuke manages; the coffee-flavored one he can part with, it was more of a goodbye than anything, anyway.

“So cold, Sousuke,” Kisumi chides, finding that usual teasing lilt to his voice once more, though it quivers around the edges, “No take backs!”

Silence settles over them with an unsettling enormity; even the background commotion of the park seems to mute, and Sousuke doesn’t quite know how to fill it. He kicks a pebble into the grass, torn between wanting to leave this all behind them like they did a few months ago and wanting to stay right in this spot to find out just how much Kisumi really wants another kiss. Across from Sousuke, he shifts from heel to toe, hands clasped behind his back, like he too has something more to blurt out.

“But we had fun that night, didn’t we?” he finally says, and when Sousuke looks up at him he shrugs until his shoulders hug his ears, something deeply amusing narrowing his sparkling eyes. “Maybe fun isn’t the right word…”

“Boring?” Sousuke suggests, hoping for Kisumi to jibe back, for them to settle onto familiar ground. Kisumi just softens his smile, gazing thoughtfully somewhere distant past the treetops lining the park’s boundaries.

“It was a pretty romantic one-night stand, huh?” he sighs loudly, mouth quirking, raising his eyebrows as if to prompt Sousuke to agree with him.

“We didn’t do anything,” he hisses, pinning him with a glare that says _don't speak so carelessly_ , but Sousuke’s discomfort serves only to put Kisumi at ease.

“We kissed, remember?” he says in a mocking stage whisper, leaning in and cupping his mouth with his hand.

“Four times,” Sousuke adds, begrudgingly wondering how he could even begin to forget.

“Bad luck!” Kisumi agrees, “And you had your walk of shame the next morning—”

“—we didn’t _do_ anything—”

“—and you told me all about Rin, and Sano, and swimming butterfly,” he rambles, and it startles a laugh out of Sousuke; maybe they should have gotten it over with and talked about all of this a while ago, though he still kind of wants to put his hand over Kisumi’s mouth, or otherwise shut him up, “And how your favorite food is tonkatsu even though you secretly always wanted a pot-bellied pig for a pet.”

“I didn’t think you’d remember all that,” Sousuke teases, nudging the top of Kisumi’s thigh with his knee, hoping to fluster him in return, or maybe to tease out whatever else he might remember. But instead he finds himself backpedaling: at his words, Kisumi winces, opening his mouth to say something and then uncharacteristically shutting it, and narrows his eyes—Sousuke figures it has little to do with the neon glow cast on his features by the late sun—and then he makes a miserable expression, as if he bit down on an unripe lemon wedge and sucked. And then, after a whole lot of face folded into a bewildering split second, he presses his palms to his eyes, shoulders slumping, and he lets out an frustrated, too-loud, ever-melodramatic:

_“Sooooousukeeeeeee!”_

Kisumi jabs a finger into his chest once his outburst ends, taking a step in closer, lips trembling—Sousuke doesn’t think he’s going to hit him or burst into tears, but he looks like he’s on the verge of a temper tantrum. The rest of the park whirls into a blur around them as Sousuke grapples to comprehend the whirlwind in front of him.

“I remember everything from that night,” Kisumi says it like an accusation, just above a whisper; the rest of the park can’t eavesdrop so easily, this time. He takes the only step left between them; distractedly, Sousuke wonders if he's trying to seem menacing, or if he wants Sousuke to pull him even closer. “I thought about it for two months straight!”

His pout is even more pronounced along his profile when he whips his head to the side; he groans, puffing his cheeks like a toddler might, clenching his hand into a petulant fist against Sousuke’s chest. Sousuke thinks he probably shouldn’t smile too broadly at a time like this, but it feels like someone shook and opened a can of soda in his chest. He bites his lip.

“Kisumi, I'm sorry I upset you,” he starts, trailing off when angry violet eyes meet his again. Sousuke curls his hand around Kisumi's wrist gently, like he's petting a wild animal, pressing his thumb to the soft pulsing underside of it.

“I didn't think a guy like you would expect a confession,” Kisumi whines, though he covers Sousuke’s hand with his own, fingertips cold against his knuckles, “I've made myself pretty clear the past few weeks.”

The sunset suits Kisumi and all his sharp glinting edges; he looks like photograph Sousuke wants to take, though Sousuke might prefer it if he were smiling. He tilts his head, catching Kisumi’s evasive gaze.

“You’ll still have to spell it out for me, sorry,” he says, smiling when Kisumi’s mouth drops. It's not every day Sousuke has the upperhand, after all.

“So dense, Sousuke!” he exclaims, but it huffs out as a laugh, fist unclenching and palm lying flat against Sousuke’s chest, refreshingly vulnerable but with something pleading in his eyes that Sousuke desperately wishes to soothe, “Why does it have to be you that I like?”

Before anything can stand between them and that confession, Sousuke takes Kisumi in by the face, careful, and draws him close, skin as smooth as he remembers it against the pads of his fingers, the tips of his hair distractingly silky where they tickle against his hands.

“Don't blush, it's embarrassing me,” he teases, though that might make him go redder, and he tilts his head into Sousuke's hand, chasing the touch. “Here’s one more for good luck.”

The fifth time seems to be the charm, as Kisumi had guessed it would; something less to do with luck and more to do with fireworks. Or with a too-long build-up. Or with the way Kisumi hums his surprise against Sousuke's mouth, hands leaping to catch his elbows and reel him in until their chests meet.

Kisumi’s lips part and Sousuke catches his bottom lip between his own, more practiced than that sleepy kiss they first shared months ago; Sousuke swallows a sharp intake and then a sweet sigh that isn't his own. He feels Kisumi's hands slide from his shoulders to his neck to his hair, he feels eyelashes fluttering against his cheek, and he feels Kisumi's tongue slipping past his own - and that’s new and nice and probably not something he should be wholly succumbing to in the middle of a park. But it is their fifth kiss, after all. He pulls back an inch to breathe, Kisumi’s shining and panting mouth upturned and kissable, his eyes dazedly blinking open, and Sousuke’s about to kiss him again, noses nudging, when Kisumi starts laughing.

“I'm glad we found each other again!” he sighs giddily. Sousuke scoffs through any mushy feelings of his own, and smiles anyway. Kisumi places his hands on top of Sousuke's, tangling their fingers, pressing them in more against his cheeks and smiling so warmly Sousuke feels it hot under his own cheeks. He turns his head and kisses the palm of Sousuke’s left hand. Then he launches into his arms, knocking him back a few steps, chin hooking over Sousuke’s shoulder, arms squeezing around his middle. For a moment, his hands sliding down against shoulder blades, Sousuke feels like he could squeeze him back and stay like that until their arms fall off. And then, opening his eyes, he feels suddenly like he crash landed back on earth.

The old couple on the bench, the group of high schoolers practicing a choreography, the boys playing frisbee, the girls playing cards, the pair of mothers power-walking, the couple having a picnic on the grass, the park employee picking up trash, the jogger pushing a stroller, the dog walker, the dog—they're not outright staring, but it feels like he and Kisumi are center stage under a spotlight cast on them by the buzzing lampposts that must have only just flickered on. Heat blooms up Sousuke's neck like a rash.

“Oi, Kisumi,” Sousuke starts to pull back sharply, but Kisumi catches his hands, laughing like this had all been a part of some grand plan of his.

“I think that lady over there is filming us!” Kisumi says happily as Sousuke starts to tug him along the sidewalk again, eager to find the nearest exit, “Let me go see if she has a picture of our first PDA.”

Sousuke will never understand how Kisumi so effortlessly makes him do embarrassing things. He guesses that by now, it’s too late to start trying to figure it out. He grabs Kisumi by a wrist, ignoring the burning sensation of eyes on him.

“You're so annoying,” he mutters, lips still wet and tingly and aching for kiss number six despite himself. He wonders how long it will take them to get back if they speed-walked, and whose room they’d end up in, and what kiss one hundred and three might eventually feel like.

“You should be nicer to your boyfriend, Sousuke,” Kisumi sing-songs from just behind him, happy to be led, and though Sousuke might not know much about being a boyfriend, when Kisumi laces their fingers together, he holds on without complaint for the rest of the walk home.

**Author's Note:**

> [here](http://kairiolette.tumblr.com/post/141007694142/ok-then-soukisu-16) on tumblr! also talk soukisu with me on my twitter [@rachethyst](http://twitter.com/rachethyst) if you want!!


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